Dr. Lydia Cao, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Next Level Lab, delivered a presentation on Artificial Intelligence’s (AI) impact on modern education at the Tang Institute this past Wednesday. As part of the Tang Speaker Series, Cao focused on education in a new academic environment where AI platforms, like ChatGPT, are highly accessible.
In her presentation, Dr. Cao detailed the ways AI can be utilized to streamline learning processes in which collaborative insight plays a key role. She described examples of how AI can organize and extract main ideas from important discussions, making information easier to digest and build upon.
“Instead of seeing AI as the one who knows the answer, we can see it as [a] dialogue partner as part of our collective intelligence. [After a discussion], to really reflect on how we talked to one another and how we used our collective intelligence, one thing you could do is voice record the conversation and ask AI to summarize the state of the discussion. There are a lot of ideas that tend to be generated in a discussion, but often, it’s hard to go back and return to ideas and have sustained work to continually improve those ideas. [When you] have AI identify the divergent ideas in the community, [you can] maximize the potential to rise above and generate new ideas,” said Cao.
Reflecting on the presentation, Patrick Xu ’27 highlighted how Dr. Cao’s talk helped him better recognize AI as a beneficial tool rather than something to avoid. Additionally, Xu stressed the importance of taking advantage of all the capabilities AI has to offer.
“We should adapt how we learn to AI instead of deciding between using AI and moving away from AI because I think [Dr. Cao] brought up a lot of really important points about how AI can be integrated into our learning, and how we can change the way we teach and learn to take advantage of the benefits that AI can bring. At Andover, we do a lot of collaboration in classes, and I think what Dr. Cao shared about working together and how AI can come into play with group projects really applies to a lot of classes here,” said Xu.
Dr. Cao also emphasized AI’s impact on the education system, noting that its technological advancement necessitates a reevaluation of what learning truly entails and how institutions approach their curriculums. She pointed out the fundamental human-centric aim of learning and the need for it to adapt to a new era of AI.
“AI is forcing us to reconsider what’s worth learning and how our current education system operates. We need to reconsider, as a society, what the role of education and learning [is] and what students need to learn… With AI now capable of writing proxies, essays, [and] answers to multiple choice questions, we are now considering the goal of learning; otherwise, it’s inevitable that people are going to use AI to do the work. We need to think about what is so unique about humans and also emphasize the process of learning and not the product,” said Cao.
Andy Housiaux, Director of the Tang Institute, voiced his hopes for students to connect themes from the presentation with their experiences at Andover. Noting the complex and nuanced nature of the discourse around AI in education, he encouraged campus adults to take on a guiding role in the conversation and ponder upon similar questions as well.
“I hope our students will…reflect on the purpose of an Andover education, and of education more broadly. Does [the] use of generative AI help [students] to grow in knowledge and goodness, or does it instead lead to the development of habits that are antithetical to virtues such as curiosity or steady effort in the face of difficulty? It’s [also] important to note that…adults and teachers in this community have a role to play as well. As educators, [we need] to communicate clearly to students our vision of what a meaningful education looks like in the face of such powerful technologies,” said Housiaux.
Solar Lu ’24 shared how Dr. Cao’s usage of analogies in her presentation helped them gain a new perspective on AI. Through Cao’s unique framing, Lu began to see how AI was not the alien machinery they’d originally thought, but rather an embodiment of humanity.
“I really loved when Dr. Cao talked about AI as a reflection of sunlight on the moon; I never really thought about it that way. I always thought of AI as something separate from humans and something that I was afraid of. But in changing my mindset about AI and thinking about it just as a reflection of human knowledge and human cognition, I think I see more value in what she was talking about, like creating knowledge,” said Lu.
